Mark Twain, a Biography — Volume II, Part 1: 1886-1900 eBook

Nor is there any situation quite as
thrilling as that awful moment in the cave when
the boy and girl are lost in the darkness, and when
Tom suddenly sees a human hand bearing a light,
and then finds that the hand is the hand of Indian
Joe, his one mortal enemy. I have always
thought that the vision of the hand in the cave in
Tom Sawyer was one of the very finest things in
the literature of adventure since Robinson Crusoe
first saw a single footprint in the sand of the
sea-shore.

Mark Twain’s invention was not always a reliable
quantity, but with that eccentricity which goes with
any attribute of genius, it was likely at any moment
to rise supreme. If to the critical, hardened
reader the tale seems a shade overdone here and there,
a trifle extravagant in its delineations, let him
go back to his first long-ago reading of it and see
if he recalls anything but his pure delight in it then.
As a boy’s story it has not been equaled.

Tom Sawyer has ranked in popularity with Roughing
It.

Its sales go steadily on from year to year, and are
likely to continue so long as boys and girls do not
change, and men and women remember.

—­[Col. Henry Watterson, when he finished
Tom Sawyer, wrote: “I have just laid down
Tom Sawyer, and cannot resist the pressure. It
is immense! I read every word of it, didn’t
skip a line, and nearly disgraced myself several times
in the presence of a sleeping-car full of honorable
and pious people. Once I had to get to one side
and have a cry, and as for an internal compound of
laughter and tears there was no end to it....
The ‘funeral’ of the boys, the cave business,
and the hunt for the hidden treasure are as dramatic
as anything I know of in fiction, while the pathos—­particularly
everything relating to Huck and Aunt Polly—­makes
a cross between Dickens’s skill and Thackeray’s
nature, which, resembling neither, is thoroughly impressive
and original.”]

CX

MARK TWAIN AND BRET HARTE WRITE A PLAY

It was the fall and winter of ’76 that Bret
Harte came to Hartford and collaborated with Mark
Twain on the play “Ah Sin,” a comedy-drama,
or melodrama, written for Charles T. Parsloe, the
great impersonator of Chinese character. Harte
had written a successful play which unfortunately
he had sold outright for no great sum, and was eager
for another venture. Harte had the dramatic sense
and constructive invention. He also had humor,
but he felt the need of the sort of humor that Mark
Twain could furnish. Furthermore, he believed
that a play backed by both their reputations must
start with great advantages. Clemens also realized
these things, and the arrangement was made. Speaking
of their method of working, Clemens once said:

“Well, Bret came down to Hartford and we talked
it over, and then Bret wrote it while I played billiards,
but of course I had to go over it to get the dialect
right. Bret never did know anything about dialect.”
Which is hardly a fair statement of the case.
They both worked on the play, and worked hard.